Kim Jong-un welcomes US basketball star to N Korea

Updated
Fri 1 Mar 2013, 4:27 PM AEDT

Photo

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman (front R) applauding as he sits next to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (front L) at a basketball game in Pyongyang. The pair were later photographed again joking together at a post-game reception.

AFP: VICE Media: Jason Mojica

Retired basketball star Dennis Rodman has become the most high-profile American to meet North Korea's leader, vowing eternal friendship with Kim Jong-un at a basketball game in Pyongyang.

The visit by the flamboyant former NBA player comes at a time of heightened US-North Korean tensions following Pyongyang's recent nuclear test.

Rodman arrived in North Korea with three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team and says he was invited by Kim Jong-un.

"You have a friend for life," Rodman told Kim in a speech after they watched a basketball match between a North Korean side against a US team on Thursday.

Kim Jong-un is reported to be a huge fan of basketball and the Chicago Bulls, with whom Rodman won three NBA titles alongside Michael Jordan in the 1990s.

Rodman's access to the North Korean leader has raised more than a few eyebrows among Pyongyang watchers.

Charles Armstrong, director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University in the United States, told Radio Australia's Connect Asia Rodman's visit - while appearing to be apolitical - has sent a "mixed message."

"Clearly there is some concern that this seems to contradict the message the US is trying to send right now," he said.

"Just a couple of weeks after North Korea's nuclear test...they want to impose harsher sanctions on North Korea and to punish them for their actions.

"And now one of the highest profile sports stars in America has come and sat side-by-side with Kim Jong-un."

A day after Rodman arrived in Pyongyang, a state run North Korean website had posted an article warning Washington that the US mainland was "well within" the range of its nuclear weapons.

In an enthusiastic commentary on the Kim-Rodman meeting, the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Rodman as saying the current impasse in US-North Korean relations was "regrettable".

The KCNA report suggested the decision to watch the game together may have been a spontaneous one.

The US State Department said Washington had nothing to say about Rodman's trip.

Kim Jong-un took over the reins of power in North Korea after Kim Jong-il died in December 2011.